Imagine life-size animals, on paper, made without a chisel or a drop of glue. This is the exhibition proposed by the gallery Saint-Jacques de Saint-Quentin, in the Aisne. These wonders come from the practice of origami, a Japanese tradition but also Chinese. Everything was made by the master in the field, Gerard Ty Sovann, an artist of Cambodian origin.

It’s a tradition that we believed to be Japanese. It’s as much practiced in China and it’s also the Chinese grandmother of the artist who taught it to her when he was a child. Gérard Ty Sohann is of Cambodian origin and he’s today the undisputed master of origami in France.

Without a scissors, without a drop of glue, he makes a square of paper … what he wants ! But it’s the animals that have his preference. The two hundred pieces he exhibits in Saint-Quentin, in the Aisne are almost all real size. It must be said that the origamist can start from a square of paper of 3 millimeters of side as of another of 25 meters. In one case his works were exhibited in Lyon, at the Palais de la Miniature, in the other, he ended up with African animals approaching the actual size. In this case, it respects not only the shape but also the postures of the animals. Proof that he also possesses an extraordinary sense of animal anatomy.